Other than the usual PUG-tards that think they can run Gold on a level 8 Turian Soldier? No, but I haven't tried in a few hours. Friend of mine last night was getting the "Lost connection to server" or whatever message about ever 5-10 minutes, I had no issues. ME3 was the only game giving him grief, so the problem, whatever it may be, is definitely on their end of things.

I was going to leave it at that, but seriously. The progression of the Revenant from I-X takes it from worthless to almost great minus it's lack of stability and accuracy (which is still a little shaky). Marksmanship addresses both of those concerns. I outscored two infiltrators (a geth and a salarian) and an engineer (human) in a silver geth match! By a lot. The damage output is just outrageous. With the extra length clip and some extra damage from the barrel (you could add a mod for more death), I was just mowing down geth like nobody's business. It's also outrageously satisfying.

I feel like now that I am finally getting a little bored with the game I have been trying to find ways to make some of the more iconic or silly weapons into a viable tactic. Creating satisfying to play classes that may or may not actually be great on gold, but are just plain fun. The falcon punching batarian is a lot of fun. The claymore wielding infiltrator. The geth liquefying infiltrator, etc. I am sure you could make a better Turian soldier, but it's hard not to smile as you lay waist to 4 or 5 cerberus troops in about 8-10 seconds without having to reload. Yeah, you kind of suck against armor and have to stay out of cover for far too long which makes it not really viable in gold without a good group - but you will be having so much fun in silver you won't really care.

I agree Captainpuke, it's fun to make marginal weapons useful. I've actually had great success with the Falcon VIII I have (hey, might as well make use of it) and I expect once I get more than a Striker I I'll do the same there.

Still not sure if I should ever take my Arc Pistol out, ever, but hey.

I agree Captainpuke, it's fun to make marginal weapons useful. I've actually had great success with the Falcon VIII I have (hey, might as well make use of it) and I expect once I get more than a Striker I I'll do the same there.

Still not sure if I should ever take my Arc Pistol out, ever, but hey.

I'd never knock the Falcon. Throwing it on a human soldier turns you into a neverending wall of everything staggering grenades. I've been useful on Gold rounds, even.

The Arc Pistol is supposed to do bonus damage to shields and synthetics, according to the single player comments on it, but other weapons strip shields better while also doing actual damage, and I haven't seen it stun Geth like it does in single player. I have trouble finding any way to make it work, unlike every other weapon I've tried.

I made the Talon work by sticking it on a Drell Vanguard. It functions better than the Disciple X even at level II, and with the Drell's heavy pistol weight reduction, my recharge rate is still +200%.

Striker was tough to work around, but I've made it function pretty well on a Turian soldier. Marksman + natural stability bonus makes the recoil on it negligible.

Well, that 1 meter reduction on the top end to Biotic Explosions shouldn't be too bad, considering the clustering that a lot of enemies do when you pull 'em through choke points. Might be of some detriment when used on large targets (particularly Atlas and Banshee who have a fairly high center, compared to a Prime or a Brute) and therefore less likely to flatten the trash around them. I wonder why they bothered though, did they feel that biotic classes were over-represented? I mean, worse case, teams just coordinate the detonations more carefully by using the lesser enemies around the elites.

Those XP bonuses for full on random are nice. Also, the grenade change makes me a bit happy for my soldier. Now if only us grenade users weren't utterly screwed by the ammo box setup...

I'm going to have to try out my soldiers again now that they significantly improved those grenades. That should be enough to actually wipe out the trash on Silver and do some good softening on Gold. It would also give me an excuse to use up my 250 thermal clip packs.

Damn, but I have never seen a game so horribly mismanaged. Was able to play fine earlier today. Go to play just now with some friends and it's decided that I need to redeem an online pass.

Edit: removed shouting. Below is what I put in the "How can we improve box" after using the Live Chat support system.

Quote:

The current state of the infrastructure that controls DLC authorization and multiplayer for Mass Effect 3 is ... underwhelming.

First off, I'm a paying customer. My ability to play single player should not be subject to the whim of the flimsy backend that manages this game. Authorizing my DLC should happen once, like ME2, and be done.

Worse yet, is the utter lack of communication. I found out second hand, while waiting for Live Chat, that the problem was in fact on the server end, and not with the client, and that the ETA was unknown.

So now, I'm stuck with an unplayable game, EVEN IN SINGLE PLAYER, because EA apparently can't manage this system.

Congratulations. Your anti-piracy efforts have succeeded in making me seriously re-evaluate my interest in any EA products at all. I will be cancelling any subscriptions I have with your company, and strongly recommend to anyone who will listen to not do business with you or your subsidiaries.

How you can improve: stop treating your paying customers like criminals by implementing draconian anti-piracy measure that only serve to inconvenience and enrage legitimate customers while not affecting piracy in the slightest.

A very similar statement was included as my reason for dropping my SW:TOR subscription.

Also, either I just had two really unlucky Gold Geth games, or Geth Hunters got better at tracking invisible targets. Trying to do the "hack 4 objectives" waves, I got tracked down by multiple hunters every time if they saw me cloak, even if I ran quite a distance after. Had to spam survival packs to get those done.

Oh, and Premium Spectre packs are back. Got a Claymore III in my first one.

played a few rounds, somewhere along the line I got a widow, so busted out my quarian infil and ...

well, Id sabotage hunters, pyros and rocketeers.... and theyd be the first thing my team shot up, zero voice chat, no way to type to people to say `hey .. uh .. knock it off`. Its a fun distraction that could be so much more, but in typical ea fashion, theyre fucking it up (see also EA`s other online gaming fuckups, battlefield, star wars et al)

Im still having much too much fun on my asari vanguard, especially now Im running the paladin and have teh 20% reduced weight on heavy pistols...

but I do wish to feck that sprint/hurdle/take cover were on different buttons, and that ladders didnt trigger animations, and and...

I really do need to figure out how to trigger more biotic asplosions on my asari vanguard as well, sometimes charges seem to trigger them, other times I can have a freeze bubble up, charge a target stuck in it and .. nothing

On the Arc Pistol/Balance changes, I have to agree with the general consensus that there just doesn't seem to be a reasonable way in which to use the arc pistol. It just doesn't seem to do enough damage, doesn't seem to get a huge bonus against shields (at least, that's what I perceive), although I guess I should try it again now that it was lightened and had its damage upped by a decent amount. It's the only weapon that I have a really strong feeling against to be honest. Everything else I have come to like or have grudging respect for how much damage it does (I am looking at you Carnifex - it just does SO much damage with those headshots).

As for the asariguard not triggering explosions when flying into your own stasis bubble - I have had this happen to me as well. I think it may be bugged because it has happened to me when I was the only person in a room on many occasions. Stasis, charge - no explosion. Given that the enemy isn't moving, it seems like lag shouldn't make as big of a difference for this biotic combo, but it just doesn't work sometimes. I suppose it is possible that lag/glitches could also be the culprit, but I don't know how we could distinguish between the two in this case. This also happens with the warp/shockwave and singularity/shockwave combo. Sometimes shockwave goes apeshit and just does no damage and doesn't set off your combos. This effectively reduces your human adepts into liabilities because you pack so little heat to get those cooldowns nice and low.

Huh. I'm now one of the masses of people who gets a "you must redeem an online pass" message when starting up ME3. Origin agrees that I own From Ashes and Resurgence, but I'm apparently not authorized to do anything but play vanilla SP.

Apparently it's happening to lots of people and no response from EA as of yet. Great!

Huh. I'm now one of the masses of people who gets a "you must redeem an online pass" message when starting up ME3. Origin agrees that I own From Ashes and Resurgence, but I'm apparently not authorized to do anything but play vanilla SP.

Apparently it's happening to lots of people and no response from EA as of yet. Great!

Huh. I'm now one of the masses of people who gets a "you must redeem an online pass" message when starting up ME3. Origin agrees that I own From Ashes and Resurgence, but I'm apparently not authorized to do anything but play vanilla SP.

Apparently it's happening to lots of people and no response from EA as of yet. Great!

Is it still listed under your entitlements on the Bioware social network?(This question is for anyone who is experiencing this, not just Viridis.)

Huh. I'm now one of the masses of people who gets a "you must redeem an online pass" message when starting up ME3. Origin agrees that I own From Ashes and Resurgence, but I'm apparently not authorized to do anything but play vanilla SP.

Apparently it's happening to lots of people and no response from EA as of yet. Great!

Is it still listed under your entitlements on the Bioware social network?(This question is for anyone who is experiencing this, not just Viridis.)

Happening to me too, and yes, it is still listed under my registered game content on BSN.

I had this exact thing happen to me both for Dragon Age I and Dragon Age II at varying times. The game would say that I was not authorized to use this content. It even happened with ME2 once. It would eventually just stop happening anywhere between a few minutes to something like 24 hours later. Recently this has been happening with Dragon Age II and has not gone away. Due to my apathy and general feeling that I should probably play less video games than I do, I never bothered to complain to EA/Bioware, until this recent set of not as transient bits of down time. It may be that the DRM server that authenticates the DLC/digital content is down? I think that was what my problem was previously.

If you call EA support (shudder), they can verify (eventually - it took my girlfriend about 30 minutes and 2 transfers) whether their DLC authentication server is down or not. Although, given the number of people who are probably calling and complaining over the current multiplayer downtime, it is definitely possible that you will just get a boilerplate response from the tech help. I found their tech support to be surprisingly pleasant, if not extremely useful (still waiting to get DA2/ME2 working again).

played a few rounds, somewhere along the line I got a widow, so busted out my quarian infil and ...

well, Id sabotage hunters, pyros and rocketeers.... and theyd be the first thing my team shot up, zero voice chat, no way to type to people to say `hey .. uh .. knock it off`.

I was having that issue yesterday. I wanted to scream - STOP SHOOTING THE FUCKING ORANGE GETH! THEY'RE ON OUR SIDE!! But I didn't.

Quote:

Its a fun distraction that could be so much more, but in typical ea fashion, theyre fucking it up (see also EA`s other online gaming fuckups, battlefield, star wars et al)

Im still having much too much fun on my asari vanguard, especially now Im running the paladin and have teh 20% reduced weight on heavy pistols...

but I do wish to feck that sprint/hurdle/take cover were on different buttons, and that ladders didnt trigger animations, and and...

10% of the time I die from doing something stupid (usually trying to outrun bullets), 40% of the time it's from being hit by an enemy I didn't see - the remaining 50% of the time is from having a different action out of sprint/hurdle/cover performed than the one I intended. Nothing sucks works that getting shot up because the "any key" isn't working correctly.

I always dodge/roll when I see a ladder ... sometimes that has interesting results when pressing the "any key," but more often than not it's a better result that triggering a climbing animation.

Quote:

I really do need to figure out how to trigger more biotic asplosions on my asari vanguard as well, sometimes charges seem to trigger them, other times I can have a freeze bubble up, charge a target stuck in it and .. nothing

It's probably due to hosting player lag. I have been rage quitting a lot lately ... lag fucking up my biotic combinations and dumbshits shooting the orange Geth are the two most used excuses for me bailing on people.

So, just got ME3 installed on Origin and updated (got the free map pack), and so I've got a Level 3 Turian Soldier and no playtime.

Is there any other method to finding players besides just adding people from the spreadsheet? I'm behind the curve, so I'm not shooting for Silver or Gold, just wanting to hop in and have some fun. Should I play some pub games first, or is that totally not worth it?

If you decide to give them a try, stick with Bronze and maybe Silver. On my first attempt at Multiplayer, I was using a biotic in an open silver solo (because everyone else ditched at the last second) game with Cerberus. I think the only things that kept me alive was long-range Singularity -> Warp biotic explosions and me being incredibly paranoid about getting hit. That kept me alive long enough others to come in. Then it became one of the fastest games I've ever had since we just massacred everything with explosions and charging krogans.

Had a really good silver run with me as an Asari Justicar and a PUG as a human sentinal. This sentinal seemed to rely heavily on tech armor. I would Reave, she would Throw. The cooldown on Throw is tiny, so the Tech Armor wasn't a problem. Between my DR from Reave and her DR from Tech Armor and the bubble, we were pretty resistant to damage.

So, just got ME3 installed on Origin and updated (got the free map pack), and so I've got a Level 3 Turian Soldier and no playtime.

Is there any other method to finding players besides just adding people from the spreadsheet? I'm behind the curve, so I'm not shooting for Silver or Gold, just wanting to hop in and have some fun. Should I play some pub games first, or is that totally not worth it?

Since you won't have much gear, you should probably pub bronze until you hit somewhere around lvl 17 or higher. As you get better equipment, you can start moving up to silver at a much lower level without too much difficulty. For what it's worth, I pub all my matches and see probably a 99%, ~90-95% and 75% success rate for bronze, silver and gold. If you pub silver and gold, it is absolutely critical that you look at everyones gear, classes and equipment before you start. It will give you a really good idea if you are going to be successful in gold and (and to a certain degree) silver, and which matches to duck out of before they start (and therefore not waste your precious higher level equipment on lost causes).

Also, Turian marksmanship is basically a fun button. Push more often for more fun. It directly correlates.

I'm pretty sure Tech Armor is the preferred approach these days now that it's only a 30% hit to your cooldowns. 30% is not really significant if you're at 200% from weapons.

Although I just use the Krogan sentinel as a tank with maxed out DR and therefore include tech armor, I respec both the Turian and Human sentinels. I will explain why below.

Tech armor gives you 30% DR with a 30% cooldown increase. But fitness gives you +65% health/shields. The damage resistance formula is (from before if the bioware forums are to be believed):Damage Suffered = Base Damage * ( 1 - 0.75 * DR)

So yeah, 30%DR reduces damage suffered by 23% or so, while fitness can increase your life pool by 65% - and you don't suffer any cooldown penalties. Since you are ideally specing for biotic explosions, you are going for the quickest recharge times and biotic explosion increasing options rather then extra damage, and that 30% you are losing is not completely trivial at gold level. 1.4 vs 1.2 seconds actually is pretty meaningful, even if it doesn't seem it.

The one upshot to tech armor is that you can explode it if you are surrounded, but if you are surrounded as any biotic class, you are screwed anyway. You carry only light pistols/smgs to hit that 200%, and if you are flanked, you have no abilities or significant life pool to evade with. So, don't get flanked.

That's why I have been respecing my sentinels to not use any tech armor at all. If you had a group of friends, and you were just the thrower, that would be different. But most people spec their characters for pugs, and you can't rely on there to be another set up man, so reducing cooldowns is always my top priority.

Huh. I'm now one of the masses of people who gets a "you must redeem an online pass" message when starting up ME3. Origin agrees that I own From Ashes and Resurgence, but I'm apparently not authorized to do anything but play vanilla SP.

Apparently it's happening to lots of people and no response from EA as of yet. Great!

Started the game to see if I had gotten the packs yet... same thing. To be honest, I think bioware/ea has big trouble with their login/entitlement system, because social.bioware.com refuses to long or if you manage a long, it refuses to hold it between pages the last two days.

Also, It cant authorize any DLC right now, which means I cant play single player either, because the load-saves are dependent on from ashes DLC.... so lunacy, pure lunacy.

Also, It cant authorize any DLC right now, which means I cant play single player either, because the load-saves are dependent on from ashes DLC.... so lunacy, pure lunacy.

Force Origin into Offline Mode. People are saying that will let you play SP with DLC. I have not personally tested it (still at work).

Officer wrote:

Dracorat wrote:

If you're *NOT* shooting orange geth you're doing it wrong.

Seriously. When they're hacked, they take extra damage from players.

It depends on what the hacked unit is doing. Rockets or flamethrower into his buddies? I'll let him be. Standing around waiting or just shooting the decoy? Orange Geth gets two to the head.

This ^^. If you have a SE and he's got decoy up, Sabotage just means extra damage because hacked targets will still go after decoys. Somewhat less of a problem now that decoys pull fewer targets...I guess that's the upshot of the change to Decoy? Silver lining!

It depends on what the hacked unit is doing. Rockets or flamethrower into his buddies? I'll let him be. Standing around waiting or just shooting the decoy? Orange Geth gets two to the head.

Well ... that's the idea - if you have a Quarian Sentinel and you aren't hacking the Rocket Troopers, Pryo's, or Primes, you're doing it wrong. If you're shooting the orange Rocket Trooper/Pyro/Prime who is attacking his friends right next to him, you're doing it wrong.

It's a team game people, learn to play as one.

Speaking of which - can you die from friendly fire? Another extremely annoying tendency people have is to step into another's line of fire. If you're across the map, it's one thing ... but "hey, let me just stroll over here two feet in front of my squadmate who is firing at a target" is scream-inducing annoying. I could swear I've fired the bullets that have killed some "teammates" on bronze who continually stepped into my line of fire.

Besides the fact that I occasionally yell at people playing the game (Never into the mic), I really do have a good time, despite what you may think from all of my bitching.

This is our number one priority, and I don't have a firm ETA of when this will be resolved, however, this is being taken very seriously.

That thread implies that the issue was fixed, but on my end, I've been dropped into in-progress matches (including one where the whole team got dropped in at the start of wave3) 100% of the time the past two days. This seems...not intended.

Although, I guess this is one way to get me to stop queueing for g/g/fbw. just not worth it to get dropped in midway through a game where the combined n7 for my 3 teammates (all soldiers, naturally) is <100.

That thread implies that the issue was fixed, but on my end, I've been dropped into in-progress matches (including one where the whole team got dropped in at the start of wave3) 100% of the time the past two days. This seems...not intended.

Although, I guess this is one way to get me to stop queueing for g/g/fbw. just not worth it to get dropped in midway through a game where the combined n7 for my 3 teammates (all soldiers, naturally) is <100.

Sam Ting ... I keep getting put into matches in progress - not nice when I get dropped right in front of Phantom.